Talk Forum – What You’re Saying

AMCtv.com awards the Talk forum commenters quoted in our “What You’re Saying” posts with prizes like a Prisoner poster, Rover beach ball or Village map (limit one per person).

Commenters this week discussed thematic connections between The Prisoner and other literature and wondered about the significance of The Village’s Tunnels.

“The mood is like some of J.G. Ballard. Think of The Village as an inhabitable version of the Library in Name of the Rose. Or what Eco elsewhere calls a rhizomatic labyrinth. At a less literary level, think of the new Batman movies or the new Star Trek or Wicked or Tin Man…. we are in a time of re-imagining previous works. Sort of like what Bloom refers to about ‘strong misreadings’…” — semiosteve

“The Prisoner to me is largely an expansion of the thoughts expressed in George Orwell’s 1984 — specifically, that individuals can have an identity and be sane without needing society’s confirmation of their beliefs as being valid. Just as in 1984, where the status quo tried to ‘cure’ a mind before destroying it, so too in The Prisoner does the corporation try to ‘bring around’ all people to their cultural status quo.” — Calcruzer

“If The Village is a form of therapy, then why do the people being treated need to go to Treatment? And if The Village is to help people that are suffering, why would you help those people by torturing them in a tunnel that is too awful to even speak about? What is the tunnel? How does it relate to the real world?” — rosepetal720

“For people to accept conformity ‘on Earth,’ they must be afraid of something, and what is more terrible than being damned to Hades? The Tunnel is just that — a hell — overseen by ‘the beast,’ an orb that brings pain.” — spymastery

Got theories about The Prisoner? Log onto the Talk forum to join in any of these conversations or start a Prisoner topic of your own. And don’t forget: Encores of Episodes 5 and 6 air Sunday night at 10PM | 9C.